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Project Manager Interview Questions

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Updated October 29, 2018

If you're a with a job interview on the horizon, you need to be prepared to answer questions that relate to your particular line of work and position. You'll likely experience a combination of behavioral and aimed at revealing your leadership, communication, and organizational skills.

Be prepared to provide examples of difficult team members you've worked with as well as unsuccessful projects you've been a part of. You'll likely also be asked about your project management failures and successes.

When vying for this position, interviewers want to know you are a natural leader who works well with others.

Below is a list of frequently asked interview questions for project manager positions. Take the time to practice these answers, so you appear polished during the job interview. You might even want to use your mobile phone to record your responses.

Project Manager Interview Questions​

What are the most important qualities of a project manager?

What specific training have you had that would be relevant to this project manager job?

If you had to rate project management as a career, from 1-10, how would you rate it?

Do you have any certifications that are relevant to this position?

Tell me about the projects you have managed.

Tell me about a full project life cycle that you managed and what was included in this project.

Which project management software and tools do you prefer using, and why?

What are the project management methodologies you most familiar with?

How do you go about planning a schedule for a project?

How do you allocate resources?

How do you handle office politics?

What is your preference for providing status updates?

What is the best way to set up and manage an interdepartmental team?

How do you ?

How do you handle a team member who isn’t productive?

When was the last time you didn’t delegate?

What was the consequence when you didn't delegate?

What was the most challenging aspect of your last project?

What was the least challenging aspect of your last project?

What type of contingency planning do you do?

How do you monitor and manage risks when working on a project?

How do you start a project?

What do you spend the most time doing each day?

Tell me how you schedule projects and establish timelines.

What is the most complicated project you have managed? How did you handle the complications related to the project?

How do you close a project?

Have you worked on a project that failed? Tell me what happened?

What was your most successful project?

What is the largest number of projects you have handled at the same time?

Do you prefer working on a single project or multiple projects at the same time?